A review by edgarallanfoe
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

4.0

There's a lot to chew on here. It addresses the struggles of balancing modern American life with native tradition, all of the social stigma and stereotypes that Native Americans have to face, poverty and imbalance derived from reservation living, and so on. The nature themes are well used and cycles of violence shown with the vengeful spirit are great parallels to the cyclical violence experienced by NAs as well. There's a dark comedic voice shown in the narration and in the characters themselves, which adds a lot to their depth and likability. The horror scenes work remarkably well for the most part too. There were multiple sections I had to reread to really let them sink in.

The writing, some of the pacing, and how the spirit was described at times was what knocked it down a few notches for me. When it's got momentum, it's fantastic, but when it doesn't, I struggled. The way dialogue was framed didn't quite catch for me and there were bouts of exposition that I didn't entirely engage with. Plus, the elk-head woman imagery didn't so much horrify me as make me do a double take - I had a hard time being frightened by that. All of this is subject to change on my next reading.

I very much recommend this book for all its great qualities. Other people are definitely likely to get even more out of it, and I look forward to reading it again.